The Wiggum Scale: Rating 2025's Most Heartbreaking Moments
Hosts: Ty Hildenbrandt & Dan Rubenstein Date: March 24, 2026 Segment: The Wiggum Scale
[!note] Episode Concept Named after Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons — specifically his "I'm in danger" moment after being publicly humiliated on the Krusty the Clown show. Ty and Dan rate the biggest heartbreaking college football moments from the 2025 season and help fans "make peace" with them.
Wiggum Rating Scale
- Full Wiggum — Maximum heartbreak. High stakes, season-defining, often with rivalry or historical context.
- Semi-Wiggum — Painful but missing one key element.
- In Danger — Heartbreaking but not season-ending.
Moments Covered
Penn State Nittany Lions vs. Indiana Hoosiers — Nov. 8, 2025
Final: Indiana 27, Penn State 24 Rating: Semi-Wiggum (Ty), re-rated to Indiana Excellence rather than Penn State heartbreak
Fernando Mendoza led an 80-yard drive with 36 seconds left. Omar Cooper Jr. made a spectacular back-of-the-end-zone catch for the winning TD.
Gus Johnson
"Mendoza in trouble. It's out. Give him the Heisman!"
Dan's view: This was more about Indiana excellence than Penn State heartbreak. Penn State had already lost five straight and fired James Franklin.
Penn State Nittany Lions vs. Oregon Ducks — Whiteout Game, 2025
Final: Oregon wins in double OT Rating: Full Wiggum ⭐
Preseason top-5 Penn State. Their signature home game. Double OT. Dillon Thieneman intercepts a Penn State pass to end it. 111,000 people. You could hear a pin drop.
[!note] Key Context Penn State needed to beat either Oregon (home) or Ohio State (road) to give James Franklin a lifeline. This loss started the chain of events that ended with Franklin's firing and eventual move to Virginia Tech.
West Virginia Mountaineers vs. Pitt Panthers — Backyard Brawl, Sept. 13, 2025
Final: West Virginia 31, Pitt 24 (OT) Rating: Full Wiggum (for Pitt fans)
Pitt scored 21 straight points, had the lead late, then gave it back. West Virginia tied it with 11 seconds left on a 2-yard TD after an 87-yard, 13-play drive. Pitt's OT possession: 1-yard loss, near INT, sack, desperation heave on 4th & 20. Their 4th straight loss in Morgantown.
14 penalties, 118 yards for Pitt.
Texas A&M Aggies vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish — Week 2, 2025
Final: Texas A&M 41, Notre Dame 40 Rating: Not Full Wiggum (week 2, defense gave up 41 points)
Marcel Reed threw for 360 yards. Key moment: Tyler Buchner botched the hold on a routine extra point after Notre Dame scored a go-ahead TD with 2:53 left. A&M drove for the walk-off TD with 13 seconds left.
[!note] Stakes Notre Dame dropped to 0-2. In retrospect: if they win this game, they make the playoffs at 11-1. The loss arguably cost them a playoff spot.
Missed PI call on the final drive also noted.
Texas A&M Aggies vs. South Carolina Gamecocks — Nov. 15, 2025
Final: Texas A&M 31, South Carolina 30 Rating: Full Wiggum (for South Carolina)
South Carolina led 30-3 at halftime. Teams were 0-286 in SEC play since 2004 when trailing by more than 27 points. A&M came back.
South Carolina's first 5 drives of the second half: 53 total yards. Lost the lead with 10:30 left. Marcel Reed and the offense completely flipped the script.
Shane Beamer
"To say I'm hurt for our guys is an understatement."
Ole Miss Rebels vs. Miami Hurricanes — 2025 Playoffs
Final: Miami wins (Ole Miss eliminated) Rating: Full Wiggum #1 (Ty's pick for most heartbreaking moment of the season)
Lane Kiffin left mid-cycle. Interim staff under Pete Golding. Ole Miss beat Georgia in the playoffs, then had Miami on the ropes. Trinidad Chambliss threw a deep ball down the left sideline in the final seconds — his receiver was pulled down on what Terry McAulay immediately called on Twitter as PI. No flag. Miami survived.
[!note] Why This Is #1 The combination of (1) Kiffin's departure drama and tender goodbye with Marty Smith, (2) an interim coaching staff, (3) beating Georgia, (4) having the lead in the 4th quarter, and (5) the non-call PI ending it — made this the most baggage-laden heartbreak of the season.
Miami Hurricanes vs. Indiana Hoosiers — 2025 National Championship
Final: Indiana 27, Miami 21
Miami's heartbreak: lost in their home stadium, driving for the win in the final minutes. An interception near the end zone ended it. Full Wiggum for Miami fans, but less so than the Ole Miss game given the lack of accumulated baggage.
Key Texas A&M Season Note
[!note] Shoutout to Aggie fans Texas A&M under Mike Elko had a successful but emotionally brutal season: the 41-40 near-miss vs. Notre Dame, the South Carolina comeback, a close game vs. Auburn, a blown 10-3 halftime lead vs. Texas, and a 10-3 playoff loss at home to Miami in 70 mph winds. Never got in the end zone in a home playoff game.
Full Transcript
Welcome to The Solid Verbal. The Solid Verbal. Come after me! I'm a man! I'm 40! I've heard so many players say, well, I want to be happy. You want to be happy for a day? Eat a steak. It's that whoop, whoop.
Dan Rubenstein, my great and good friend, welcome back to the show. Hope you have a good weekend. Hope things are warming up out there a little bit, starting to be a little bit nicer.
We had one shining moment on Saturday when it was 68 degrees and sunny, and then fell to a real feel of 17 degrees yesterday. I was on the Northwestern campus, actually. I went and saw Northwestern-Michigan tennis, Ty. Indoors, warm, free pizza. What more could you need? But it was a good weekend. A good weekend nonetheless. Saw family and friends. Went and watched some basketball on Friday afternoon. It actually kind of helped me with this idea for this show. I don't know how much you want to get into it, Ty, but I have a lot of thoughts. But it was a good weekend, Ty.
Excellent. I wanted to get into that. I'm going to tee you up here in a second to unveil the concept for today's episode, which I am very excited about. It cuts a little too close to the bone, I'm not going to lie. But it is a good concept. Now is the time of year to put it out there into the college football universe, and we will do that momentarily.
But before we do, hit follow, hit subscribe. If you have yet to do so, if you want to be with us all throughout this long, cold offseason, I guess not as cold right now because spring football is starting up. We have things to talk about on that front. With each and every passing moment, we've got a little bit more actually going on in and around the world of college football here in the offseason. But we'll get to that on a future episode. Verballers.com is where you can go if you want to further support what Dan and I do, get all these episodes without the ads a little bit early, access our Discord, and so on and so forth. And of course, if you've yet to do so, make sure you go out there and follow us on any of our social media accounts as well as our newsletter, Quick Slants. SolidVerbal.com.
So you said you watched a little basketball. I did too. Thursdays are always made for upsets. Fridays made a little bit more for some of the favorites. But March Madness is now in full swing. We did see a number of good upsets this weekend. I believe we're going to have Iowa versus Nebraska with a trip to the Elite Eight on the line, which is a pretty big deal, a Heroes game in just a slightly different form on the hardwood. Things are really heating up. I'm excited about the first weekend of games. I'm excited about where things go next week.
But as you said, it serves as a really interesting precursor to today's episode concept. I will admit, yeah, when you said this to me at first, I was like, okay, where's he going with this? Yeah. Where is he going with this? But the more that you unpacked it, the more that you described it to me. Yeah. Fell in love with it, Dan. What are we doing?
Thank you very much. First of all, real ones, no, it's called Nebraska Ball. Okay. And I know you're not a hoops head like I have been for the last 36 hours. Right. But no, I was watching Friday's action, specifically, I was watching Tennessee-Miami of Ohio. Miami of Ohio was like that, not a Cinderella story because they won a bajillion games and lost in the MAC tournament, but still made it in, and Tennessee kind of trucked them in the end. They were up big most of the game.
The thing I'm not going to say I love about the tournament, both the men's and women's tournament, honestly. I don't love it, but I appreciate the emotion of it is you get all those close-ups, right? You remember the Northwestern kid sobbing as Northwestern was losing a potential upset bid, or the, I think it was a Villanova, is it a flautist, Ty? Somebody who plays the flute? Yes. Sure. Yeah, great. Fighting back tears as she's playing the fight song or whatever song the Villanova band was playing as Villanova was going down.
I appreciate, you know, you get all the Surrender Cobras, and you saw the Florida fans as they were losing to, I believe, Iowa, right? They were upset by Iowa. A lot of emotions on the sideline, a lot of emotions in the crowd. I appreciate that. And they actually show that during One Shining Moment at the end, right? There's like the up of One Shining Moment and everything is great, but then it comes down, where it was like, hey man, you gave your best, and it's, you know, time is short, and the road is long, and the blinking of an eye, and the moment's gone. And so I appreciate that because you don't appreciate the sweetness of victory without the tart nature of defeat. The agony of defeat, yeah. Yeah, right.
And so I obviously was thinking about college football, and we're in college sports heaven right now with the NCAA basketball tournament, spring sports. And we know the portal guys coming in. We know the recruiting class. We know who's on the way out. We know who the new coaches are. We know what the schedule is. This is not a preview time of year. But this is a time to sort of make peace with whatever 2025 was or wasn't, Ty.
No question about it. I am ready to get hurt again. And I don't know what it took for me with Oregon after getting absolutely blown out by Indiana in the College Football Playoff, but it takes some time for a lot of us, even if your team wasn't in the College Football Playoff, that you are still nursing your wounds from the heartbreak of, I guess, very specific losses from the 2025 season.
And then I got to thinking about, okay, well, whose heartbreak was so public? And what reference is so current, Ty? Gotta be current, right? It's gotta be current. Super current. Yes. And so, a lot of people are in danger of having their college football fandom ruined. I'm in danger. That's Ralph Wiggum, of course. And the ultimate heartbreak for Ralph Wiggum was when he was humiliated on the Krusty the Clown television program, thinking that he and Lisa were a couple, Ty.
But if you're able to confront that heartbreak from this previous season, Ty, make peace with it and move forward, then you're the ultimate winner. I won! I won!
And so, what we're here to do is analyze the biggest heartbreaking moments of the 2025 season. Help people make peace with them. Analyze them as if they were, you know, you're going full Wiggum, which is, of course, in danger. Just danger of going full Wiggum. Maybe just semi-Wiggum. Don't look up semi-Wiggum on Urban Dictionary. Don't do that. No.
And I just want to go through some of those heartbreaking moments and analyze the heartbreaking nature of them and help people move past it. How about that?
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